Forum posts

I'm still interested, but no promises. I couldn't think of anything back when this started, but I have a small idea now I'll try and knock out in the month we have left.

What are you using to render these backdrops?

EDIT: UE4. Yes. Stupid. But they're rendered to static backdrops? It's all 2D?

Uh oh, Archie's projecting again.

Yeah, sorry. Part-way through writing that I started replying to SourceSkyBoxer without thinking!

He must be referring to Marc Laidlaw leaving the studio. He was there for 9 years after the last Half-Life title, I think it's very unlikely he didn't have some serious work done on the next one.

Also don't judge Source 2's capabilities from the DOTA 2 tools. Those tile tools are unique to that SDK. They're absent in the recent VR workshop tools, and both of these SDKs are scaled down for their limited purposes.

There is no Thief 4.

I couldn't resist.

I've played the demo and would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. It's certainly better than the usual modern tactical shooter's range of cannon fodder.

It is much better than the average modern shooter. The new Doom's worth playing at a lower price. It gets closer than any shooter I've played in a long time but it also makes a tonne of mistakes and is seriously bogged down with progression bloat. I probably sound harsh because I'm really tired of throwback shooters missing the point, like Shadow Warrior & Hard Reset before this. They seem to think non-regenerating health and no iron-sights are all you need over the more important details like level design, encounter design, item placement/balance, weapon and enemy roles etc.

God I love that 100,000 Revenants in SnapMap video.

Thoughts?

The designs are hit and miss.

The Revenant looks pretty much how I imagined he would in HD, but they've nerfed his threat level something huge. He gained a jetpack, but lost the stinging homing rockets. Now he fires off crazy scattershot rockets that seem fly everywhere but your direction.

Soldiers are forgettable as they always were, but less of a ranged threat now that they've traded in their hitscan weapons for slow projectiles. There are also mindless fodder zombies now that shamble around the levels being about as useful as Ant in an Aussie accent competition (you son of a bitch! -AJ). The Imp's got a nice mobility overhaul, being able to cling to walls and the like, but it looks like an alien lifted right out of X-COM (which is cool, but it's an odd choice).

Pinkies grew freakish armour and take heavily reduced damage from the front, forcing you to shoot 'em in the ass, but now you'll never encounter more than two, maybe three at a time. No more hordes of pink, fleshy muscle walls closing in on you.

Pain Elementals buggered off somewhere and didn't come back. Cacodemons are pretty much the same. As passive a fight as ever, but just not nearly as cute.Barons of Hell and Hell Knights have been separated into very different looking classes. One resembling the eyeless Doom 3 design, and the other resembling the classic pink-skinned, green fireball-throwing, horned bugger. They also leap around like some kind of leapy thing on leap-enhancing crack, and close in on you very quickly. I actually really like what they've done with these guys, they're bigger and badder in all the right ways.

Lost souls are useless and die in about two hits. Guess they were afraid of making them anywhere near as antagonising as they used to be. Pain Elementals & Arch-viles are nowhere to be seen. There is a new enemy that loosely fills the Vile's role, except it's far less fierce, doesn't put anywhere near the pressure on you that the Vile does. I hate that son of a bitch. The new Mancubus is a disaster.

Won't spoil what they've done with the real big, bad demons of Doom, except to say they're... different.

In general it seems that because there's far less monsters on screen they've tried to make them harder hitting and more mobile, to varying degrees of success. Some of them are well reimagined, others not so much. I've been meaning to write up a Doom review for some practice but I'm being super lazy about it. My opinion of the game is sort of wearing thin since finishing it, and it was only ever that it was "just alright".

That looks fantastic.

Not sure what the rules were exactly, but I once watched an extreme ghost run where the player had to place back every single item exactly where he found them, leaving absolutely no traces. I just stick to expert, but I love the extremes the Thief community go to just because the games let them.

Damn right.

Furthermore, among the small flaws, I hate the fact that my character do things on his own while I'm still looking through his eyes, like when he takes the little girl of the beginning (which I can't stand for) in his arms or listen to the empress' last words. Talking of which I don't see the point in forcing the player to defeat enemies in order to defend the empress if it's to get, once all enemies are defeated, a cinematic where the player's character is recklessly watching the empress talking, gets knocked down and sees the empress being killed.

Edit: Damn it's impressive how I sound blasé in this post!

Nah, you're pretty on point here. Probably one of my biggest peeves in current game trends is control being stolen away from you while you watch your protagonist do something you wouldn't do yourself in that situation.

I like Dishonored, but it's absolutely weakened by modern conventions that don't sit well with it's freedom of approach ideals. A few too many times where your watching instead of doing.

Stick with it, there's a lot more genuine choice in the gameplay then it's opening chapters indicate. Can't do much about the item glow, but disable every marker you can in the options and just explore the maps at your own pace. It's a shame the DLC isn't bundled in with it because it's stronger than the main game.

Dark Souls the Third:GIANT ENEMY CRAB.Snoozing with Siegward.Huge ongoing album of spoiler-filled screenshots!

Even Strider was getting excited about mapping for it the other day!

What are you implying.

Could it be that the grunt manning the turret is in the same squad as the lone soldier, and because tanks don't seem to have the distance limit it's informing the other soldier to attack?

Wow, what's with the overwhelmingly negative feedback on that Before mod? I played it a few months ago and thought it was a decent little experience. No better or worse than the vast majority of of short Half-Life mods at any rate.

Is it just Greenlight shenanigans?

The wpoly isn't totally outrageous by modern standards, but there's a lot visible at any one time.Those fully 3D window blinds/slats probably aren't helping, but they do look nice.

I'm interested. Goldsource & Spirit all the way.

I thought it was pretty amusing, 2much! I always get a kick out people tricking their way through maps. The way you left that one zombie for Dr Orange, and your bittersweet ending got a laugh out of me.

Played through this again yesterday. Still great stuff, and nicely packed up now. I like the new view model skins. I also never realised TWHL needed it's own special forces until now... something to think about.

If it's not too much trouble can I get you to do two things to my map, Urby? Clip off the space under the office desk, and copy another turret into the secret room? JeffMOD found out you could exploit these earlier and trap yourself in my floor!

What engine is that in? It's suspiciously un-source-like

Engine is Source 2, I believe.

Yeah, Source 2/Dota 2 Tools. Not really the best choice to show off models as it's limited to super basic Dota shaders & lighting, but I want to practice getting work into the engine in the meantime.

potatis: what's your multiplayer mod about? Changes in gameplay?

Also, if TWHL goes down it's because Penguinboy's previous life as an underworld mob boss finally caught up with him and there's nothing left of him to maintain the site.

it'd be like a crappy imitation of ModDB

That's all it really needs to be, I think. A miniature forum-based hub for projects like TWHL Tower with a dedicated place for updates, media and relevant downloads so people don't have to fish through an entire thread looking for relevant info.

I understand it's not a priority, but I think it'd absolutely be worth the effort for project managers. I could even see it being adapted for a portfolio sub-forum, similar to Interlopers.

I'd like to see a better way to implement community competitions (mini-compos, if you will), though I can't really think of any way to do it.

I've discussed this with Penguinboy a fair bit. It's one of the things I really want to happen. I'm not sure if it will make the initial site update (Pb has a lot of priorities), but we've got a few solid ideas floating around for a community-based project system I think people would really appreciate, myself included.

Moved on from baking textures, now I'm trying to build a fully modular set of props. It's a slow process but I'm fairly happy with my results so far.

Thanks!

Please to be telling me what tools you have used here.

Mudbox and a little bit of Maya. Mudbox is really very simple to learn, the hard part is stopping your sculpts from looking too artificial.

Ancient photo of my cat Pilchard (the one on the left).I think Archie has a twin. Also Urby's cat.

Glamour shot.

I've been teaching myself to sculpt textures in high poly and bake them down to game resolutions. I need a lot of practice but I've got one done that I'm proud of.

Deus Ex still oozes atmosphere, and it's absolutely consistent and on point with it's graphical fidelity, world building & detail. I don't put much stock into the arguments about games aging badly, or ever 'becoming' ugly after a certain point.

But this game... not so much. This sprite work wouldn't have made the cut back in the 16 bit era.

I'm tentatively in. It's just that no concrete ideas are immediately jumping out at me.

Yes. Give them back.

Don't ask me how you'd script it all, but I immediately thought of a scenario where the mapper was trying to kill you while you walked around inside his WIP. Watching his mouse pointer move about dragging, stretching and deleting brushes to try and catch you off guard.

You can. I'll definitely be giving it the boot when I make the upgrade.

I'm also hoping there's a way to make the taskbar more compact like in 7.

No true Australian would put Foster's on their car. Not even for a joke!

Starting to think we should deport AJ.

Heh, admittedly my favourite memories of those missions are the son's private estate and the castle interior. I remember a bit of trouble in the valley, but I wasn't trying too hard for Silent Assassin, and the St. Petersburg levels are the ones that stick out in my mind as subpar. I'll have to fire the game up again sometime soon and remind myself.

EDIT: Okay, those trivia comments are pretty damning. Top 2 worst levels ever!

Jessie: I love that guard exchange so much. Never fails to crack me up. I did consider Assassins, because it's easily one of the top missions. Garrett's idea of revenge is the ultimate insult, and I always leave Ramirez face down and unconscious in the stables of his beloved 'pets'.

Archie: Noun rules schmules. Made to be broken! I can't believe I forgot the Hitman games, there's a hundred great levels in Silent Assassin alone. The string of Japanese levels right after your choice are particularly great.

On the topic of a new topic, has Top 5 Mods been done? It seems like an obvious one.

Reviving this thread because I started writing up a massive list for Top 5 Levels at the time and then totally forgot to post it!Bluff Eversmoking (Unreal)

Hard to decide on a favourite Unreal map as almost all of them share that amazing sense of being lost on a moody, alien planet, but I'm going to go with Bluff Eversmoking. This level is still a fantastic sight after all this time. A humble little Nali monastery perched on top of a large crag, high above a vast lake. Night has set as you enter the Bluff Eversmoking in search of survivors of a downed ship, only to find the monastery desecrated by enemy warriors. Nali priests are being tortured to the tolls of their own bell tower, and before long you come to find the sole survivor of the crash has already met a depressing end. This level is a fantastic combination of non-linear exploration, environmental storytelling, cool secrets and heavy atmosphere. It ends with a cable lift ride that circles around the monastery for no reason other than to show off a creation the devs had every reason to be proud of. It also helps that it's paired with some damn good music.Liberty Island (Deus Ex)

While I see a lot of people talking about just how daunting this is for a introduction level, I can't help but disagree. If you went through UNATCO training, you were more than prepared enough for this beauty, but none-the-less it pulls off a number of clever tricks to get you underway regardless. The most obvious thing is the circular layout of the level, whichever route you take at the start, you always circle the main objective: the Liberty pedestal, visible from every inch of the map. When you first exit the docks, there are two initial directions you can take: straight ahead (well lit and heavily patrolled) and to the right (a shadowy path with a lone guard). Those who want to get shooting (and who probably chose the GEP gun) will more than likely take the forward path, while the right hand path is the obvious choice for sneakers. After that the whole island is fair game, and there are a number of curiosities about the level that give you small, contained introductions to the various game systems. Off the coast of the north dock is a sunken boat, locked tight and easy to miss, but with crates of goodies that are awfully tempting to those with the appropriate swimming and lockpicking skill. To the east is a small maintenance bunker of sorts that introduces players to environmental hazards, namely electricity, and the idea of manipulating the environment (or using sheer brute force) to overcome the danger. Around the rear of the pedestal is a large container pile that can be used to silently climb the tower, skipping the heavily guarded ground floor, and the entirely optional objective within (rescuing Agent Hermann). This level really is a perfect microcosm of the Deus Ex experience, and it does all of this without loading zones or blatant signposting.The Sword (Thief: The Dark Project)

Garrett isn't usually one to take requests, but the blind promise of reward for a easy nights work quickly places him in the mansion of the eccentric nobleman Constantine. It starts off simple enough, you've robbed many mansions like this before, but in short order things start getting weird. Entire rooms are filled with vegetation, and the corridors throw you off with ever-changing scale and direction. Next thing you know you're stumbling through upside down rooms and halls that twist, swimming through a bath in the ceiling, and witnessing an impossibly expansive void in the middle of the mansion full of stars. Guards with strangely lit grimaces patrol the corridors, hinting at a second nature you won't discover until it's too late. There is more to Constantine and his mansion than you could have possibly predicted. It turns out he hired you to rob his own mansion, and he has big plans for you when you succeed. This is the level where Thief really starts showing off it's intriguing, bizarre world, and the mysterious forces that operate within it's shadows.Lady Boyle's Last Party (Dishonoured)

Dishonoured does a pretty good job of letting you complete it's missions in interesting ways, but it really goes all out in this level. In most missions you'll simply sneak or stab your way through, but here, with the help of a stolen invitation, it lets you walk straight in the front door as an honoured guest. You can socialise with other party goers and learn about your target, snoop around upstairs, and spend your time admiring the rather ridiculous luxuries these nobles enjoy in the face of a devastating plague that's crippling the world outside. The whole mission plays out as a clever little investigation: you must determine which of three party guests is the correct target, as all three are wearing near-identical costumes. Or you can just bag all three and win by sadistic process of elimination! Apart from the main mission you can also engage in a duel with another guest, which is the only time in the game you can shoot a man's face in the presence of guards and not have them jump down your throat. All in all a really cool switch-up of the games standard rules with lots of awesome little touches, and it's also dang pretty.

Couldn't decide what to place in fifth, so here's a bunch to pick from:Life of the Party (Thief II: The Metal Age)

This one seems to be the favourite of Thief fans everywhere, and it's easy to see why so many people choose it. In the space of one single level you will scramble across rooftops (the Thieves' Highway), rob a small traders bank, interrupt a couple of bumbling thieves, stop by a Necromancer's tower to summon some zombies, witness the hilarious guards of two feuding nobles slaughter each other, infiltrate a masquerade ball in a massive 6-story Mechanist tower, discover the enemy plans, evade a trap and make it home in time for breakfast. It is sprawling in every sense of the word, and while these games were never on the cutting-edge of graphics tech back then, it's a wonder the sheer complexity of this map didn't just explode computers back in the year 2000.Groznyj Grad (Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater)

Even through the game centers on it's wilderness survival levels, it feels like the entire game was building up to this massive concrete fortress in the heart of Tselinoyarsk. You'll spend a lot of time here at the end of the game as you break in and work your way from the very extremeties of the base to the humungous hangar and research facilities at it's core. Things don't quite go to plan of course and you also end up spending some time in it's prison, but oh well.Frigate Crash Site (Metroid Prime)

The entire planet of Tallon IV is a damn masterpiece of location design, but a personal favourite location is the frigate crash site, which turns out to be none other than the frigate you inadvertently brought down at the very start of the game. When you arrive here late in the game you've already had a nice, long look at the various locations on Tallon IV, fought through hell and learned much, and the more subdued tone of the level gives lots of time for reflection at how far you've come. The thing that really makes it though is that this is playing the entire time.Bridge Point (Half-Life 2)

I didn't really appreciate this level when it first came out, but in retrospect there's a lot of love about this level, particularly it's re-use of space and scale, even if it sort of brought 2004-era Source to it's knees and has a serious case of Silent Hill fogitis. The route over the bridge is blocked by a Combine forcefield, so you have no choice but to scramble under the bridge, over it's broken pathways and steep supports, just to flip the power switch all the way on the other side. Naturally the journey back isn't going to be easy either, as a Combine gunship decides to ruin your day. And then of course when you do make it all the way back and start your crossing a Combine train decides this is a fine time to come roaring down the tracks towards you. At least it's a fine opportunity to play target practice with seagulls.Morpheus (Unreal Tournament)

Urby beat me to it, and it seems like people have UT pretty well covered already, but I'm still going to list this one. Three towers of increasing height, gathered around a central platform holding the hotly contested rocket launcher. The roughly circular layout and varying levels of access make for a perfect flow as people dodge around the towers in low-gravity vying for dominance of the best weapons. Why anyone would build towers so damn tall they breach the planet's atmosphere is a question best left unanswered! Mandatory music link.

The thread can go back to being dead now...

Strange. The VMTs look right to me.

The only thing I can think of is adding the "$model" "1" command, though it's usually only needed for stuff like the refraction shader.

One of the thousands of cheap horror games that have sprung up recently, based on a SCP Foundation (a fake horror wiki of sorts) entry.

It's literally about walking down and down and down until the games random number generator decides to throw it's game-ending jump scare at you.

Archie these screens are so nice I almost wish I could undo setting you on fire those few times in GTA.

People are still thinking Jessie broke the rules? That's a great compliment.

JeffMOD: sounds like a problem that can only be solved with more turrets!

Urby: put a turret on the ceiling every 32 units, and fill the secret area with them. If the bullets don't kill you their alarm sounds certainly will!

Hm, I wouldn't mind taking another crack at it with Source's I/O system. That's the one thing I missed most working on the original.

Definitely leave Malle's floor as it is. I think everyone intended it as constructive criticism, and it's absolutely unfair to change or remove someone's hard work. I don't think anyone's entries reflect poorly on the mod.

Becuase obvious trigger_teleport usage?

Incorrect.

I walked into a camera and got killed by turrets, but the autosave was after the cameras went off, so I was stuck in an infinite death loop

Strange. I'm sure I placed just the one autosave when you first enter the room, before you can possibly reach a camera.

That was a lot of fun.

Considering he "broke [his] knee pretty bad", that scientist can walk just fine.

I thought that was amusing too.

Your entry was insanely clever Jessie, I think you got the most out of the limited space!

I enjoyed everyone's entries at some level, lots of cool ideas, except I have to say Malle's was very obscure, and the crusher puzzle was nothing but quicksave trial and error.

All tied together really nicely by Urby, too. I love the health & item gates, and his floors are all really solid.

Pillars of Eternity

Off to a good start:I'm seeing this last screen an awful lot.

I'm quite surprised there are people out there who really despise System Shock 2! To each his own, but I'm kind of interested in why.

I did enjoy the sound design and voice acting which was top notch

Terri & Eric Brosius along with Stephen Russell. They are... or were, one hell of a combination.

Side note: Terri and Stephen are now working on Underworld Ascendant, in veeeery early development from Paul Neurath's new team, OtherSide. At the very least I'm expecting aural greatness.

I bought System Shock 2 during the sale for, like, a buck or so. I should get around to playing it sometime. Wasn't it made by Looking Glass? I have faith in them ^^

Co-developed with Irrational Games, though you'll notice a lot of Looking Glass touches, and not just because it's a Dark Engine game. Could be the Looking Glass fanboy in me, but I think it's fair to say the best elements of the game come from their influence.

The original System Shock was really basically an attempt to translate dungeon crawler gameplay to a sci-fi environment. Shock 2 sticks with that but updates the interface and storytelling to more modern (at the time) conventions.

It's not as minimal as Thief in terms of UI, there's a heavy emphasis on inventory/resource management and RPG-style character building. You can't run and gun this game like a regular shooter, and there's no character build you can possibly come up with who is a master of all trades, so you can expect to have a lot of 'skill blindspots' where you'll have to get more creative with your gear.

I love it to bits.